“Health Education England working across Kent, Surrey and Sussex (HEE KSS) is able to pay the fees for 6 students within the region to undertake the Postgraduate Diploma in Learning Disabilities Nursing at London South Bank University.  We know that the need for newly qualified LD nurses both nationally and locally is increasing as the Intellectual Disabilities workforce is facing a period of intense changes,  due in part to the Transforming Care Programme becoming embedded but also because of other factors including retirement age of the current workforce.

This PG Diploma is designed to challenge learners as it trains and educates future specialists, experts and leaders. Work placements for these students will be undertaken within the KSS region. More information can be found here:

http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/courses/course-finder/learning-disability-nursing-pgdip-msc

The deadline for applications through UCAS is 30th June.  The course code which the applicants need to select is B764 which is for PG Dip Learning Disability Nursing and our institute code is L75. The link  to the online applications site is:

https://www.ucas.com/ucas/undergraduate/register

If you want to apply but the deadline has passed (we know it is very tight), please contact Rhona Westrip, programme manager for the Intellectual Disabilities programme at HEE KSS in the first instance Rhona.Westrip@hee.nhs.uk – and she will give advice about moving your application forward.”

Councils significantly overspent their adult social care budgets last year after some savings targets proved “impossible” to deliver, directors have warned.

The annual budget survey by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) found councils spent £14.2bn on adult’s services in 2016-17, £366m more than was planned. This was more than double the £168m overspend reported in 2015-16.

Councils plugged the overspends last year by transferring funds from their reserves or other departments. But the association warned that directors were finding it “increasingly difficult” to implement planned cuts in practice, with less than a third (31%) confident of delivering savings for this year.

http://bit.ly/2uh9kTy

Are you working with people with a learning disability directly? Or do you know people who do?

Mencap wants people with a learning disability to receive the right support to access and stay in work. To help make this happen we want to hear from people with a learning disability who are looking for work. We want to find out more about their experiences with getting support to help them find a job.

We have created a short survey and would like this to reach as many people with a learning disability as possible. If you know anybody with a learning disability who is looking for work, please share the survey with them! Please also share it with anyone else in your network who might know someone with a learning disability looking for work so they can share it with them.

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/mencap_employment_services

The survey will stay open until 15 July 2017. Its findings will support Mencap in their efforts to improve the employment support offer for people with a learning disability.

A guide from Public Health England

This guide is for staff working in either pharmacy teams or learning disability teams and for anyone who supports people with learning disabilities. It summarises what the research tells us about the needs of this diverse group of people in relation to pharmacy services and what are the best approaches to use when working with them. It includes links to useful resources and good practice case studies.

http://bit.ly/2rX8k6l

The #KSSCOP17 Conference

The Kent, Surrey & Sussex Learning Disability Community of Practice annual conference took place on 15 June 2017 at the Charis Centre, Crawley.

It was a great day and lots of people came together to discuss how best to make sure people with learning disabilities get the right support so that they make the choices and decisions about the things they think are important in their lives and get great ongoing health and well being support.

This video was made during the day and shown at the end of the conference to sum up the energy and positivity of the day.

 

How do we build our Community? The 2017 Community Consultation

During our Conference on 15 June we had a big conversation about how we build our community. Many of the questions talked about are in this document: http://bit.ly/2qNf1Xd   This was the consultation document for everybody.

See more about the consultation on the Conference report page, here >

The 2017 Conference Workshops

The 2017 Conference saw a rich selection of workshops for delegates to choose from, some led by Experts by Experience, others by expert practitioners and professionals.

STOMP, Stopping The Over-Medication of People with a learning disability, autism or both – Jill Parker, VODG and Carl Shaw, NHS England
Do you have concerns about the amount of psychotropic medication some of the people you support are taking? This workshop introduces the STOMP pledge for social care and offers an opportunity for providers to consider how they can work more collaboratively with health professionals to tackle over-medication in their services.

You can watch videos of nearly all of the Conference workshops on our You Tube page, here >